Browsing by Subject "kulttuurisemiotiikka"

Goals. The aim of this research is to discuss the thoughts 5th grade schoolchildren have produced about the Eura ancient costume and reflect upon their way of conveying its meanings. The study approaches the costume from a semiotic viewpoint as a cultural text, which carries the memory of the culture, conveys certain meanings via its details and produces new meanings in communication. The study emphasizes the idea that a cultural text, such as the ancient costume opens its signification in a thorough discussion with multiple angles. The literature related with ancient costumes bases on scholarly works by specialists in the field. In this study the schoolchildren attain a role of experts while producing material for the analysis in their assignments. The object for the children's reflection is the semiotic entity of the costume: the textile and the necklace, set of ornaments, bronze-plated knife sheath, broad spiral bracelets, rings and bronze spiral ornamented apron. The scholarly information and the children's reading appear in a dialogue within the study. The research questions were as follows: what kinds of meanings do the children produce for the Eura costume? In what ways do they interpret the costume and its details, especially the necklace and the bronze spiral ornamented apron? How do the children's reflections relate with the existing scholarly information about the costume? Methods. The study included 25 children from the 5th grade at a grammar school in Helsinki. The research questions were tackled in individual interviews, as well as writing and drawing assignments. The theoretical part of the study discusses semiotic literature, mainly semiotics of culture, as well as scholarly studies dedicated to the Eura costume. Results and conclusions. In the light of the semiotic approach applied in this research, the Eura ancient costume represents a cultural text, which carries certain cultural memory, conveys existing meanings and generates new meanings and even new texts. Based on the interview done in this research and the assignments given to the schoolchildren, it is possible to follow these processes in the ways the children read and signify the originally complex and strange cultural text. In the way they produce own interpretations of the details and symbols within the costume, we can find the emergence of new meanings. The stories the children produced are examples of generating new texts and of the costume functioning as the carrier of the cultural memory.